Introducing Rowan Donald

Today, I’m so pleased to write this post. Our son, Rowan Donald is here!!  Rowan arrived on Sept. 9 through a planned c-section that went very smoothly.  He came bursting into the world with a head full of dark hair and a beautiful wail, utterly full of life.

With the c-section, we were blessed with five days in the hospital with around the clock care from nurses and a little “cave time” just me, Graham and Rowan.  We’re now home and we are in hustle and bustle mode.

Life is full.  Full on that is.  Trying to juggle all three kids is a massive challenge.  But one that I’m also reaping the rewards of.  The other night, I was feeding Rowan while the girls danced to Paul Simon while Graham cooked dinner and I couldn’t help but feel that was one of the happiest, most content moments of my life.  I have my complete family.

I’ve had lots of people ask how we came up with Rowan’s name and so I thought I would share.

Ever since my dad passed away (his name was Donald), I’ve wanted a son to pass my dad’s name onto.  Graham lovingly agreed and so we had our son’s middle name picked out to be Donald.  However, my favorite boy’s name since I was young has always been Miles.  But I have a brother named Miles and a brother named Donald so the name Miles Donald was a bit too much.  I had to pick between a first name and a middle name.

Graham and I were out to dinner discussing our options when I said that I couldn’t bear holding my son and not passing on my father’s name.  That it would mean so much to me to explain to Rowan who he was named after and it would fill a piece of my heart that aches when my dad is not there at the hospital to welcome another grandchild.  So Graham replied, “than it’s no question.  Donald is the middle name.”  At that very moment, “American Pie” the song that is absolutely my dad’s and my song came on at the restaurant.  I cried happy tears knowing that my dad was sending down his thanks and approval on the middle name.

We then began discussing the first name and it was between a couple of names, Rowan being on the list.  We went through the list and we both decided that we liked the name Rowan the best.  Right as we decided that, “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong came on at the restaurant.  That was the song that my dad and I danced to on my wedding day.  I cried again.  It felt like such a strong sign that dad was there, watching over us and his grandson.

We were pretty sure we had the first name set at Rowan but we continued to play with other names as we came across them.  Then I was hit with a huge pregnancy scare.  At about 25 weeks, they thought that my placenta had potentially attached to scar tissue on my uterus from previous c-sections.  If this was the case, they were going to have to remove my entire uterus in order to save my life.  We had to go to some specialists and run through some tests to see if things were attached.  This became one of the scariest times of my life.  During this anxious time, I read that in ancient times people thought the Rowan tree had protective powers.  I hung on to that thought and I decided that Rowan would protect me and I would protect him and that we would be in this together.  That got me through the testing period when they thankfully found that nothing was attached and I could keep my uterus and have a routine c-section.

The final moment that really sealed the name was telling Graham’s cousin, Rowan, that we were going to name our son, Rowan.  Graham’s cousin has always been like a brother to Graham and he is one of my favorite people as well.  He lives in South Africa but happened to be in town the weekend before I gave birth.  It was a beautiful moment letting him know and seeing how touched and moved he was.

So there you have it, how the name came to be.  And now our handsome son is here and he has our hearts bursting.  We all love him so much, including his massively doting sisters who are very good at petting him.

Life is full but also grand.